What my musings are all about...

Blogging might well be the 21st century's form of journaling. As a writing teacher, I have always advised my students to keep a daily journal as a way of organizing their thoughts for future writing projects, a discipline I have unfortunately never consistently practiced myself. By blogging, I might finally be able to follow my own good advice.

The difference between journaling and blogging is that the blogger opens his or her writing to the public, something journal- writers are usually reluctant to do. I am not so reticent.

The trick for me will be to avoid cluttering the internet with more blather, something none of us need more of. If I stick to subjects I know: sports and literature, I believe I can avoid that pitfall. I can't promise that I'll not stray from time to time to comment on ancillary subjects, but I will make every attempt to be interesting and perhaps even insightful.

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Coach Pagano and Other Subjects

It's very cool that the Indianapolis Colt's players are shaving their heads to honor their coach, Chuck Pagano's battle against Leukemia. As someone who has survived a similar blood cancer, I appreciate what Coach Pagano is going through and understand what a boost it must give him knowing what his players are doing. If this was all that made news about Coach Pagano's cancer, I'd stop yakking with a hearty hurrah and good luck from all of us cancer survivors but, I must say, I cringed when I saw the recent half time show of Coach Pagano tearfully addressing his players.

Not that he shouldn't have done it, I cringed because he allowed that personal time between him and his team to be televised. I don't know what motivated him to do that. Was he responsible for letting the cameras into the locker room or was this a tasteless decision by management to gain some kind of perverse sympathy for its team? I watched both fascinated and horrified as an intimate moment between coach and players turned into soap opera. Cancer is not a locker-room pep-talk. Give it one for the Gipper and all that kind of nonsense. Cancer is not theater.

Athletes by Walker Gibson

The groggy fighter on his kneesSways up at nine, postpones the count;The jockey, forty-to-one shot, seesThem all go by, yet whips his mount;The losing pitcher, arm gone lame,Still drops that last one in, a strike -So you and I play a stubborn game,Disaster prodding us alike.So you and I, ignoring odds,Tug caps, clutch ropes, and flail our whips,Make sacrifices to the gods,Breed children and build battleships,Though ours is not an athlete's doom,Nor death like any locker-room.

Thomas Meschery, a son of Russian immigrants, he became the first international player to play in an NBA All-Star Game in 1963.

An All-American success story. Born in China in 1938, he came to the U.S. with his parents after WW II. An All-American at Lowell High School, San Francisco, and St. Mary's College, Moraga, California. He was the youngest player to named a first team AAU All-American. NBA Star for ten seasons. Noted as one of the toughest players in the NBA. His jersey number has been retired by both St. Mary's and Golden State Warriors. Inducted into the Bay Area Sports Hall of Fame in 2003.

Tom has published two books of poetry, 'Over the Rim' and 'Nothing You Lose Can Be Replaced' and a fourth-coming book of verse, 'Some Men'. He was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame in 2000.